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John Bourne & Co, the original company within the Group, providing haulage and lime, compost and other aggregate services throughout the Home Counties, has just been awarded CLOCS Champion status. This sounds like a Good Thing - but what is it? A little bit of investigation is called for.

So what is CLOCS? The acronym stands for Construction Logistics and Community Safety. It is an initiative stemming from a report published in 2013 by the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) which highlighted the road safety problems when large construction vehicles operate in close proximity to vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists. A CLOCS community was formed, which published a national standard for improving and promoting road safety within the construction and logistics industry.

Haulage operators can demonstrate their commitment to better road safety by signing up to the CLOCS Memorandum of Understanding, and implementing a plan for continuous improvement. Obviously, as JB & Co already are FORS Gold accredited, this helps showing that we take these matters seriously. Having adopted the MoU and an implementation plan, and having been thoroughly assessed over a period of time, we have now been awarded the CLOCS Champion status.

Nobody works harder at safety and environmental issues than our transport management team - it's good to see all their efforts rewarded!

Jonathan, Alex L and I went to the NEC yesterday, for a wander round the SALTEX show It was well attended and the exhibitors we talked to seemed, on balance, quite happy with the proceedings. These days, it feels mostly like an equipment show, with a great deal of impressive machinery for doing various things to unsuspecting grass plants (and to their artificial cousins as well, to be sure). However, there were quite a few of our friends and competitors there and it was good for me to meet them and continue building up an understanding of the industry.

The next similar event is BTME in Harrogate on 23-25 January. The one thing that was consistently suggested by the people we met, was that these two events ought to be amalgamated. But of course, it's two different organising associations and, although there is a great deal of overlap between audiences and exhibitors at the two events, there may be a certain amount of institutional pride and prejudice to be overcome in order to merge the events.

It was an interesting visit but it's clear that there is no need for us to take a stand there. For one thing, the NEC really isn't a very attractive place. No big exhibition centre really can be - especially not when it is the only really big site in the country. Next week Jonathan, Peter and Richard W will be off to Cologne (for the FSB fair). Every major German city has an exhibition centre like that - it is country where they take trade fairs seriously!